End Of The Road: SUNDAY
(better late than never..)

Proceedings on Sunday begin pleasantly around lunch time with sunshine, a free ice cream, a free copy of Mojo magazine (whose seemingly endless supply of turgid prose about Pink Floyd provides a bit of a god-send on the long journey home), and an unexpectedly intense conkers tournament in the shade of a pagoda (no less) at the back of the main stage field.

So as strings are slung, as conker smashes against.. um.. other conker (thesauri ain’t worth a damn round here) and the tension mounts, I get to hear, if not exactly see, Port O’Brien, who ply a rousing, rootsy take on contemporary indie-pop conventions with some success, and The Young Republic, who have keyboards and violins and backing singers and shit, and do a real yawnsome post-Arcade Fire type morass of blah, with what I would judge to be considerably less success.

But enough shilly-shallying! My watch says it’s time to run over to the circus tent to see Pete & The Pirates! Admittedly, I don’t know them, but… they’re called ‘Pete & The Pirates’! What can possibly go wrong?

As I suspected they might be, Pete & The Pirates are indisputably ace. Pete & The Pirates are four blokes with messy hair flailing around with guitars, and a really kick-ass drummer who looks about thirteen, wears a spiffy cowboy shirt and has immaculate hair. Pete & The Pirates! Their songs splutter and bang along like a teenager’s first VW Golf at breakneck speed, with mucho clean-toned thrashing and jangling interspersed with unexpectedly ambitious Television/Only Ones soaring dual guitar leads. They holler heartily and with no shortage of wit about girls and, well, I don’t know, maybe some other things, but mostly girls, and why not, eh? Pete & The Pirates! They all look like they could have been in Blur when they first started. They probably weren’t picked last for games in school, but they definitely weren’t picked first either. Pete & The Pirates! You can tell how much I enjoyed ‘em, cos I’m saying their name a lot.

I’ve been thinking about why I liked (and shall continue to like, god willing) Pete & The Pirates so much, and have reached an odd conclusion: they are refreshing. Yes, an eternity after any hope of a group of young men playing guitar-based ‘indie’ music being deemed relevant or exciting has been snuffed out by successive generations of deadening music press conservatism and reduced to a readymade set of clichés, clothes and aesthetic signifiers, somehow Pete & The Pirates effortlessly bypass the whole sorry mess, emerging fresh as a bunch of gawky kids back in 1981, falling off their BMXs, walking into lampposts and wondering how they can take those three punk records that make their heads feel funny and turn it into something relevant to their lives.

Yes, in an era when seekers after more interesting or fulfilling music are generally pushed in the direction of any number of pretty-faced, over-precious art studenty bands, ostentatious self-proclaimed ‘outsiders’ and gimmicky avant-backstabbers, it is, bizarrely, SUPER-REFRESHING just to see a bunch of everyday fellas up there blasting out the kind of cheap, stoopid, uncool guitar pop that comes naturally with enthusiasm, book-smarts, a love of racket and a sense of humour. Can I say their name one more time? Well it’s my blog, I can do what I like. Pete & The Pirates!

Hmm.. maybe got a bit carried away there. Apologies to all you avant-backstabbers in the audience, but y’know what I mean. I don’t even know who I’m referring to really, I’m just irresponsibly over-generalising to make my point. (You damn back-stabbers! Why, I‘ll…)

Anyway, moving on, I’ve been watching Jeffrey Lewis play live at every possible opportunity over the past five years, and whatever he’s up to, it’s always been a good bet that it’s going to be tons o’ fun. So when friends unfamiliar with Jeffrey’s work ask me what I reckon is worth catching at the festival, “do you know Jeffrey Lewis? Well you should see him, he’s terrific” comes up as a pretty automatic reply.

I should have thought on. I mean, I was already familiar with the concept behind Jeff’s new album, but I have an uneasy feeling that a hefty proportion of the audience must have been feeling like they’d missed a pretty heavy–ass meeting when the guy best known for his goofy comic book story-telling and songs like “The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane” and “I Saw a Hippie Girl On 8th Avenue” opened his set with a solid block of nine Crass covers.

Now I like Crass, and I like it when Jeffrey sings Crass, and I can really dig the elements of their song-writing that he’s seeking to bring to light, stripping them of their hardcore baggage to reveal fiendishly smart, cyclical mantras of free will and personal liberation. But the unease of the crowd and the possibility of an unbridgeable contextual gap between singer-intention and audience-understanding makes it a hard set to enjoy, and I can’t help but picture the folks whom I earlier recommended Jeff Lewis too standing somewhere behind me scratching their heads as this weird-lookin’, over-serious dude stands on stage mumbling on endlessly about fucking the system, jackboots to the face, tearing down society’s bars, fighting for autonomy etc. I mean, we’re here at End Of The Road in our capacity as comfortable, affluent, white 20-somethings who reckon we’re a bit different, a bit more gentle and open-minded and into free expression and sticking up for the underdog etc: decadent fuckin’ hippies of worst possible kind in other words. So what is this? 1983? Like, whatever: save it for the miner’s strike dude, we’ve got jobs and credit cards.

Crass, lest we forget, were fuckin’ hippies of the BEST possible kind – mean ones who get stuff done – and on a certain level, I have nothing but admiration for Jeffrey Lewis for quietly throwing a sweet, psyche-folky half-brick through the greenhouse of our collective self-satisfaction. But getting lectured is always a grim business, even when the lecture is righteous, and standing through all these damn Crass songs makes me itchy; rather a similar feeling to when your doctor friend comes back from Bangladesh and regales you with how many lives she’s saved and how many babies she’s successfully delivered whilst you were busy drinking beer, listening to garage bands and working shitty office jobs.

The seismic change of tone when Jeff, Jack and friends flick the switch for an obligatory closing rush through “No LSD Tonight”, “Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror”, “Something Good” and an ace new(?) punky song about a band being too young to tour is subsequently pretty hard to take…. It’s tons o’ fun of course, as promised, but the comfort bubble is burst, the damage is done.

Mp3 > Jeffrey Lewis – End Result

But ANYWAY, time to put all this self-doubt back in its box and get back to the love-in, cos we’ve got a lot of good stuff coming up, and, quick! Only five minutes to get across to the main stage to see Herman Dune!

International rock stars Herman Dune

As shall swiftly become clear, Sunday at EOTR was very much the Day of the ‘Dune, and, to me at least, their main stage set was a reaffirmation of everything that makes the band so great and special. As much as I’ve learned to appreciate the unwieldy “Giant” as a laudable step forward for the band and a great record, and as much as I’ve enjoyed the accompanying live shows, I have still felt a shadow of apprehension hanging over the past 18 months or so of ‘Dune activity.

Are they really the kind of band who are going to be able to benefit from a major label deal? Are they really the same band without the vital presence of Andre on stage? Can adding bass and backing singers and adding trendy ethno-rhythms and trying to go for a big Dylan/Band kinda sound really ever be an effective substitute for the simple beauty of the classic guitar/guitar/drums line-up? Can the untouchable, spontaneous magic of earlier eras be maintained now that David and Neman are fully-fledged indie-pop poster boys playing festival stages and thousand-plus capacity venues instead of empty working men’s clubs and the upstairs rooms of suburban pubs?

The answer to all those questions, I’m finally happy to report, is YES. With the new incarnation of the band settling into itself and throwing out confidence and good vibes from every angle, Herman Dune are becoming goddamn rock stars, in the best possible sense. David HD has always been an amazingly charismatic performer, and he is really able to come into his own in the context of a big, impersonal festival stage, rocking the hits from ‘Giant’ and ‘Not On Top’ and sending as-yet-unrecorded-but-already-familiar songs “My Baby’s Not Afraid Of Sharks” and “You Don’t Know Where I’ve Been” straight to the audiences hearts in a style half Jonathan Richman, half Bruce Springsteen.

Half way through each song, David manually whacks up the knobs on his amplifier, just like in the old days, and strides in front of the stage monitors to deliver a blinding hair-blowin’-in-the-breeze solo before giving the crowd a big grin and heading back to the mic for the next verse. What a band! That Herman Dune write so many tremendous songs and play their instruments so effortlessly well is great and all, but it’s always been their spirit that sets them apart, and it’s still there. (They also make me incredibly happy by throwing in a take of one of my favourite Dune songs ever, the horror movie-tinged “Sheer Wonder”.)

Mp3 > David Ivar Herman Dune & Lisa Li-Lund – Sheer Wonder

According to my notes, there now followed a period in which not much music was watched. I did catch of a few minutes of someone who I THINK might well have been Johnny Flynn, who was top – a rockin’ folk band (and how often do you see one of those these days?) blasting out spirited, original tunes with cello and violin, and a guy seated at the drum-kit playing slide guitar whilst working the bass drum and hi-hat. Nice!

I also spent some time in the darkened and well-hidden cinema room, and watched the last hour of ‘Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid’. Also nice!

Hanging around near the main stage, I decided I may as well catch a bit of Seasick Steve. Actually, I was expecting to really enjoy his set; I know he has connections with all those fucking awesome Fat Possum blues guys like T-Model Ford and R.L. Burnside and I've heard various reports of how much ass he kicks etc. Sadly though, it was pretty underwhelming stuff. I mean, he seemed like a pretty cool guy and he played some truly wild slide guitar, but he was working the whole "I'm just a simple ol' down home dungaree-wearin' redneck dude" cliché pretty hard, and had a bit too much lumpen hard-rock shtick to his sound for my taste. His songs are all of the repetitive one-lyric, one-riff North Mississippi blues variety, which is fine, but unlike the other guys mentioned above, he didn't have either the emotional intensity or the groove to pull it off, and as a result the songs dragged like a fucking anchor. The crowd seemed to love it though, so hey, what do I know.

Anyway, the hell with this: I’ve received a tip-off that David Herman Dune is going to be playing some songs in the little clearing with the piano at six o’clock, so let’s get over there…

Thirty or forty people slowly assemble, huddling and whispering as the sun begins to set and the echoes of Seasick Steve still thundering on drift through the trees. A passing hippie guy in a caftan takes the opportunity to seat himself at the piano and whack out random notes for a few minutes. David turns up with his guitar case, accompanied by various other Dunes and Wave Pictures, and the assembled folks are so hushed and polite that not even the traditional ‘murmur’ goes up.

So yeah, David gets up and says ‘hi’ and starts strummin’ through a few songs for us. His semi-acoustic is kinda quiet in the open air, and we’ve all got to strain a bit to hear properly, but is it ever worth it. He does his great song about the violin teacher – if you’ve seen the band live recently, you know the one - and a couple of other new ones and… man, I don’t know how many times I’ve seen them, but I continue to be awed by how both Herman Dune brothers are able to just pull a seemingly endless supply of astonishing new songs out of thin air. If even half of the new stuff David performs over the course of this weekend ends up on the next Dune album, it’s going to be a very special record.

A few folks shout out requests, and Dave Tattersal of The Wave Pictures joins David as they stumble through a rendition of first-ever-Dune-single “Shakespeare And North Hoyne”, remembering the words as they go along. And then they do “Stepped On Sticky Fingers” and “Going To The Everglades” and.. wow. I never expected to hear those older songs played live again. Dave does a Wave Pictures song, and it is fantastic and riotous and faintly crazed, and reminds me I should really take the time to find their record. Current ‘Dune bassist and roaming ‘60s West Coast fanboy troubadour dude Turner Cody gets his turn to do a few numbers too. He dresses like one of the Fabulous Charlatans, and doesn’t sound a million miles away either. His songs do tend to resemble formal song-writing exercises, but are nonetheless wry and smart and pretty and damn enjoyable. Things reach a natural conclusion when it gets too dark to see properly and the main stage starts making noise again, and everybody disperses with scarcely a word.

Mp3 > Herman Dune – Shakespeare & North Hoyne

It’s nighttime now, and the main stage really looks kinda cool with the stage-lights reflecting on the pagodas and the collective shadows of a five hundred middle-aged parents in their lawn chairs and so on. Ol’ Howe Gelb is back again, Giant Sand in tow, meandering his way through an odd series of sticky, insubstantial swamp-ballads. Hang about, he’s started trying to call on the guests again… I swear, it’s like some pathological condition the dude’s got; “Robyn? Robyn are you out there? Come on again and play piano! Hey Lorna, why don’t you come and do a song? Is Emma there? – hey, why don’t we get ALL the girls on? Hey Kurt, you wanna come and play guitar?” Some of them must be cursing the day they ever made friends with this guy.

Back to the circus tent now, and despite starting late on a rescheduled timeslot, Josh T. Pearson is in fine form, his voice stronger than I’ve heard it since the days of Lift To Experience, his guitar tone dense as a typhoon, splitting the difference between white light and a rain of brimstone as he fights on alone beneath weird canvas heavens. “Heavy shit”, my friend says. Well.. yeah. In person, Josh Pearson is as affable and lovable a guy as you could ever hope to meet, but when he’s standing on a stage with a guitar, he doesn’t KNOW any other kind of shit.

Josh T. Pearson

It actually hurts to tear myself away from Josh’s set after two songs, but… well, guess which band are due to be playing a celebratory extra late night set over at the Local tent..? Got to get there in advance to ensure we get in. As such, we and the other gathering ‘Dune fans are treated to a few songs by Manchester(?) singer/harpist/guitarist Nancy Elizabeth, who is really excellent, if that glacial, note-perfect, hermetically sealed lady folk singer type world is a place you like to be.

So; tent is packed to capacity; everybody stands up and pushes forward as the folkies shamble off home. We’re quite near the front, which is great. Soon, Herman Dune are playing again. They’ve got backing singers The Babyskins on stage with them, and Jack Lewis and the drummer from the Jeff Lewis Band going for it on hand percussion and bongos and bass and yelling, and a couple of other people too, and best of all, Dave from The Wave Pictures on lead guitar. He may look like a nervous A-level student, but this guy is a CHURCH KEY guitarist (see The Captain’s 7th Commandment); nothing more than a quick “you know this song? It’s, like, lots of F and, uh, G#m I think and C and stuff..” from David, and he’s there on cue after every chorus with a fucking perfect, nuanced, applause-demanding solo. Yeah!

Herman Dune, with Dave Tattersal (far left)

The set-list here is a breathless A to Z of fan-pleasing ‘Dune wonderment, from “Suburbs With You” to “You Could Be A Model, Goodbye” to “This Will Never Happen” to “Enemy’s Gone..” and “Walk Don’t Run”, all jammed out with extra room for solos, ad-libs, sing-alongs, the works. Everybody on stage is having a ball, the crowd is clapping, singing, cheering, dancing, passing round drinks precisely the way bands must always hope audiences will be. Fresh night air blows in from behind the stage, and positive energy is just dripping off the walls. It’s just an amazing, amazing, joyous blast of music being done the way it should be done, and enjoyed the way it should be enjoyed. With LIFE. They could have (should have?) gone on all night.

And you know what? I’m not going to say any more, because when you love a band, or enjoy a show, this much, everything just comes out as gushing and aimless song-title listing anyway.

I guess this post must have been hard work for anyone out there who doesn’t like Herman Dune. But then, Christ, life in general must be too. My apologies.

Mp3s (all from a 2005 BBC Radio Session) >

Herman Dune – Suburbs With You
Herman Dune – Orange Hat
Herman Dune – You Could Be A Model, Goodbye

Lying awake in my sleeping bag later on, I listen to some disco party in one of the big tents. Some DJ is playing a set of really sweet soul tunes. At 3am, s/he plays Winston Churchill’s ‘Never Surrender’ speech, follows it with a slow Stevie Wonder jam, and End Of The Road is over.

The only music I hear on Monday is one of the Oxfam stewards playing Hendrix and De La Soul on her iPod for us as we wait endlessly for the long-promised coach to the station. Across the road, somebody rearranges the festival’s giant ‘WELCOME’ letters to read ‘OWL WEE’. Josh Pearson poses for photos next to some wooden animals, then hitches a ride back to London on a flatbed truck loaded with antique tables and chairs. It starts to pour with rain, and the tables and chairs get wet. Word arrives that the driver of this legendary coach has “taken the wrong road”. Shrug.

End Of The Road = GOOD TIMES.

Next year let’s all go.

Labels: End Of The Road, festivals, Herman Dune, live reviews